The Private Life of a Masterpiece was a BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 arts documentary series which told the stories behind great works of art; 29 episodes of the series were broadcast on BBC Two

BBC Two

BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

, commencing in 2001 and ending in 2010. It initially ran for five seasons from 2001 to 2006, for a total of 22 episodes; each episode was 50 minutes long. A seven-DVD box set of the first five series was released in 2007, which re-arranged the documentaries into genres from art history. A further seven episodes were broadcast between 2006 and 2010.

The series was produced by independent TV production company Fulmar TV, based in Cardiff

Cardiff

Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

. The series producer, who also devised the concept of the programme, was Jeremy Bugler.

The series was praised by the TV critic of The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, David Chater, who listed it at Number 30 in The top 50 TV shows of the Noughties.

Episode guide

Series 1 to 5 was broadcast between 30 May 2001 and 17 April 2006:

Disc One — Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 Masterpieces
Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

: La Primavera

Primavera (painting)

Primavera, also known as Allegory of Spring, is a tempera panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. Painted ca. 1482, the painting is described in Culture & Values as "[o]ne of the most popular paintings in Western art"...

Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello , born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. Giorgio Vasari in his book Lives of the Artists wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his...

: The Battle of San Romano

The Battle of San Romano

The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian...

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

: The Last Supper

The Last Supper (Leonardo)

The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...

: The Resurrection

Resurrection (Piero della Francesca)

The Resurrection is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, painted around 1463-65. Though documentation is lacking, the gothic Residenza, the communal meeting hall in which it was painted, was returned by Florentine authorities to the citizens of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, 1...

Disc Two — Seventeenth century Masters
Rembrandt van Rijn: The Night Watch

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...

: The Art of Painting

The Art of Painting

The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, and or Painter in his Studio, is a famous 17th century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. Many art historians believe that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting...

Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...

: The Rokeby Venus

The Rokeby Venus

The Rokeby Venus is a painting by Diego Velázquez , the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age...

Disc Three — Masterpieces 1800–1850
Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

: The Third of May 1808

The Third of May 1808

The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808...

Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

: Liberty Leading the People

Liberty Leading the People

Liberty Leading the People is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricouleur flag of the French Revolution in one hand and...

Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave

Disc Four — Masterpieces 1851–1900
Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

: Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...

: Whistler's Mother

Whistler's Mother

Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler. The painting is , displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design, and is now owned by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris....

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

: The Scream

The Scream

Scream is the title of Expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky...

Disc Five — Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 and the Post-Impressionists
Auguste Renoir: Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre

Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre

Bal du moulin de la Galette is an 1876 painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and is one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces. The painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in...

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

: Sunflowers

Sunflowers (series of paintings)

Sunflowers are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The earlier series executed in Paris in 1887 gives the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set executed a year later in Arles shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase...

Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Disc Six — Masterpieces of the Twentieth century
Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

He followed his success by developing into his Rose period from 1904 to 1907, which introduced a strong element of sensuality and sexuality into his work...

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...

: The Kiss

The Kiss (Klimt painting)

The Kiss was painted by Gustav Klimt, and is probably his most famous work. He began work on it in 1907 and it is the highpoint of his so-called 'Golden Period', when he painted a number of works in a similar style...

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

: Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Christ of Saint John of the Cross is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1951. It depicts Jesus Christ on the cross in a darkened sky floating over a body of water complete with a boat and fishermen...

Disc Seven — Masterpieces of Sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

: David

David (Michelangelo)

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

: La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans

La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans

"Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" is a c. 1881 sculpture by Edgar Degas of a young dance student named Marie van Goethem. The sculpture was originally made in wax before it was cast in 1922 in bronze...

Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

: The Kiss

The Kiss (Rodin sculpture)

The Kiss is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Like many of Rodin's best-known individual sculptures, including The Thinker, the embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The...

A Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 series was broadcast between 24 December 2006 and 26 December 2006:

The Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece
Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

: The Annunciation

Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington)

The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, from around 1434-1436. It is in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. It was originally on panel but has been transferred to canvas. It is thought that it was the left wing of a triptych; there has...

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Census At Bethlehem

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

: God's Child

An Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 special was broadcast on 11 April 2009:

The Private Life of an Easter Masterpiece
Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

: The Taking Of Christ

A Christmas special was broadcast on 25 December 2009:

The Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece
Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

: The Mystic Nativity

The Mystical Nativity (Botticelli)

The Mystical Nativity is a painting of circa 1500–1501 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, in the National Gallery in London. Botticelli built up the image using oil paint on canvas...

An Easter special was broadcast on April 3, 2010:

The Private Life of an Easter Masterpiece
Rogier van der Weyden: The Descent from the Cross

A Christmas special was broadcast on 25 December 2010:

The Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece
Filippo Lippi

Filippo Lippi

Fra' Filippo Lippi , also called Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Italian Quattrocento .-Biography and works:...

: The Adoration of the Christ Child (Lippi)

Adoration in the Forest (Lippi)

thumb|300px| "dark intensity and bursts of golden light " - [[Filippo Lippi]]'s Adoration in the ForestAdoration in the Forest is a 15th century [completed by 1459] painting by the Carmelite friar, Filippo Lippi, of the Virgin Mary and the newly born Christ Child lying on the ground, in the unusual...

External links

• Fulmar TV — Official web site of Fulmar TV's Private Life of a Masterpiece